I wonder where I get it from...

Below is an essay of sorts written by my great-grandmother, Susan Brewster Wheelock, circa sometime around 1930ish. It's not dated like many of her other writings my mom found, but the biographical details mentioned it in set the date at least after my great-aunt was born, and likely a bit after, though my mom can't recall our family history well enough to place it any more precisely. Susan, or "Graud," as my mother and aunt called her--somewhat unflattering, though I called my grandmother "Gaga", and I'm not sure which is worse--graduated magna cum laude from Smith College in the 1920s and was "smart as a whip" as Gaga liked to say. While I have the body type and mannerisms of my mom, I have often been told I look more like Graud than any other family member; we have a very similar profile with our oddly acquired button nose, fair skin and dark, curly hair. Our personalities are (were?) quite alike as well, I'm told, as are our "brains." (Smart as a whip? Me? I guess I do okay.) Anyway, the following essay or diary entry, typed verbatim from the original--now on delicate yellowed paper with faded ink--indicates that we probably would have gotten along had we had the chance to know one another.

"Give Me Another Title"

My pride is reduced to smoldering embers when I am forced to write "housewife" on a legal document. I know I am a housewife and ever shall be, but it shrivels my soul. I want to break my back and ruin my hands in the attainment of beauty. I want to tire my brain over something beside the planning of three menus a day multiplied by three-hundred and sixty-five ad infinitum. The pseudonym "housewife" for a widow with two children and a dog is ridiculous and insipid. The eternal ordering of food to fill those gaping mouths, the fighting of dust and disorder, the stern desire to whip my children into a better mold that I have patterned, the necessity of a calm and judicial mind in the face of the countless exigencies of the day depresses me. Rather than read a delightful book, I dust. Rather than practice my adored Schubert, the spinach awaits my pleasure, the vacuum cleaner ties itself into electrical knots, the groceries are late, agents ring the bell, the Delineator desires my subscription. I have become engrossed in "Broome Stages"-the potatoes burn. My brain slowly atrophies in a seething mass of dust and spiders while a symphony plays to the clatter of dishes. I am and ever shall be a housewife, but that speck of dust will not get me down.